


Headcanons

by ArvenaPeredhel



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, M/M, Maitimo is really fucked up by Angband, Suicidal Thoughts, eating disorder tw, the only character death is canonical and more of a mention than anything, there are other characters but these two are the main ones
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-05-07 17:03:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19213759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArvenaPeredhel/pseuds/ArvenaPeredhel
Summary: Various musings on a theme of love and loss and reconciliation and recovery





	1. Nelyafinwë and Food

When he comes to, he isn't hungry. Not in the slightest. There's a great black yawning hole in him but it doesn't perturb or burn, it merely exists. It isn't until Findekáno almost shoves a bowl of broth and half a loaf of bread still warm from the oven into his lap that it occurs to him he hasn't eaten in Valar know how long. But it's still not hunger, more a need to fill the hole in his torso with food.

He's crying after one spoonful of the broth. In fact, he cries enough for Finno to make a comment about how if he wanted salt he only needed to ask for it, which earns the dark-haired prince a glare, because as much as Finno loves him he just doesn't understand. None of them do. None of them grasp how revolutionary this is, how much he's missed this, how could he have tasted things with such flavor and never realized it, never appreciated it? He's weeping over everything and overwhelmed and shaking and it's over half a teaspoon of vegetable stock, you're so weak, Maitimo, how dare you?

But it's because there's nothing that can describe real food after an eternity of starving yourself, because it's as though you've been miraculously healed, as though nothing else matters.

It's about a week afterwards that he gets sick and tired of broth and bread. What once had been life itself is a sign of how weak he is, and yet he presses on, forces himself to eat, makes himself keep going, but eventually the stuff makes him nauseous despite how he craves it. Each time the flavor lessens, the broth seems to thin, the bread creeps closer and closer to the half-ash half-sawdust hell he was fed as a thrall, and yet he craves it because it gives him a little more strength.

But eventually his stomach goes sour at the sight of yet more broth (even broth with a few vegetables or shreds of meat) or bread. He won't drink the former any more, but he does get good at using it to water the bush outside his window. The bread he hides. Stuffs it beneath his pillow or under the mattress or behind the headboard for later. Because it's good and he might need it later.

Findekáno catches him sneaking out and raiding the kitchens in desperation for real food. He's stopped - "you can't, Russandol, your body will go into shock, you'll die!" - and sent back to his room, and he resolves to find another way. Things are ugly for a little while, because he stops even pretending to be interested in the broth and becomes sullen at the mention of food. Finally, in desperation, Finno goes to his father and begs him for help.

"Please, Atya. He's wasting away, you have to do something. Please."

"Findekáno."

"He won't listen to me. He's going to starve."

And because he can't let his nephew die, not after all he's been through, Nolofinwë forces himself to put the interests of his family first and has a long Discussion with Maitimo about food and eating and the healers' intentions.

It only gets worse once his brothers take him home.

He gets his first hunger pangs almost six months after his rescue, and they terrify him. He thinks he's dying, that he's been poisoned, and when a panicked Macalaurë summons a healer he takes one look at his King and says it's simply hunger. The door closes and the sobs burst forth and his siblings don't know what to do so they leave him alone until there are no more tears.

He makes everyone remind him to eat. Servants, guards, his brothers, Findekáno, it doesn't matter. If he isn't reminded he won't do it, because it takes far too long for hunger to set in, and then he'll get dizzy and have to be carried back to bed and that embarrasses him to no end. 

Bread is something he’s sensitive about, because he lived on it in the pits of Angamando. There are certain textures and types that actually make him sick. 

About a year after his awakening, he swears off broth completely. Even in soups. It makes things awkward at first for the cook, but they adapt. He just can’t do it.


	2. The Return

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For once, something uncomplicatedly happy.

Maglor sneaks back into Valinor in a rowboat.

It's the year 2015 CE (the seventh Age of this world), and he's just had enough. Maybe it was a spiritual awakening, or the desire for redemption, or homesickness, or the need to be around other elves again; whatever the reason he's done with Earth and humanity and wants out. The Straight Road has been open to him for some time - Uinen came to him one night on the shores and spoke to him, told him all was forgiven, that his centuries of charity and kindness and solitude had earned him a return journey, that he was indeed released from the Oath for only Eru can decide the fate of a soul - and so one night he rolls his eyes at the stars and grabs his iPod, and his solar charger for said iPod, and his dumb hipster hat that his brothers would laugh at, and he gets in a beaten up old rowboat the color of the ocean under a grey-green sky and starts heading westward. He'd been living on the coast of Washington. It wasn't hard to set out.

The trip is surprisingly brief, which he supposes is a blessing, because had he been expected to row for days on end he never would have made it home in the first place. But he makes it, his boat scraping the sand of Avallónë, and he picks up his back and tucks the hat into its side pocket and makes his way to a nearby inn.

The dialect hasn't changed much, though now he hears Sindarin as well as Quenya. He speaks the language of his childhood out of habit and respect and finds his accent pristine - the girl who takes his coin (he'd held on to a small pouch of Tirion-minted gold out of homesickness) asks how that fair city is faring and smiles and points him to an upstairs room. And it's different, yes, but it's still home, and he slips into dreams under familiar starlight after hearing the songs of his youth coming from the common room.

When he comes to the next morning, he can hear trumpets outside. 

It takes him a moment to understand what's going on (after all it's been ages since people spoke Quenya day-to-day) but his ears remember soon enough, and the words have him scrambling to look out the window.

_"The House of Finwë, after its long-standing peace with the House of Olwë and upon completion of the reparations for the war crimes committed at Alqualondë many centuries past, is returning from the signing of a treaty renewing the bonds of friendship between both parties and forgiving all past wrongs."  
_

He sees people below, and bright banners with sigils long-forgotten, and suddenly panic seizes him and he must get out, he must leave, he must away, and he grabs his bag and dons a forgotten cloak left behind by some former guest and draws up the cowl and pulls the hood over his head and tries to sneak out down the stairs.

The common room is alive with activity. He flinches when the door bangs open and a familiar booming voice (attached to wild blond hair and tanned skin and the eyes of a woodsman) cries "What's the price on your best ale? We're here to celebrate!", and he blinks back tears, because it's been so long, it's been _so long_ , easier to avoid. Can't go out the front door. Try for the back.

Except to try for the back means to leave the stairs, and as he leaves and creeps along the wall more people pour in - five more, to be precise, but who's counting? (he is) - and more voices and each one fills his heart and rends it simultaneously. He wants to run, so he keeps moving closer and closer to that glorious goal of the back exit. But as he walks, the owner of the first voice (have you learned nothing, he thinks, nothing in your years of time without me that would make you more aware of your own space?) moves backward and collides

right

into

him

and an elbow hits his face and knocks him back hard and _Valar please no let me slip by_ -

- despite his age, despite his experience, despite the long millennia of solitude he is still so much less imposing than someone who's always been younger than him, and he stumbles back. For a moment he knows he could duck out gracefully, but once an older brother, always an older brother, and so - 

“Fucking hell!” he says, in English, and then again in Quenya, “Ercamando! How old must you be before you grow less clumsy? Were the past ten, fifteen thousand years not enough time?”

He is not angry. Not really. And when someone (he suspects it is Pityo) cries out “ _Macalaurë_!” and he is suddenly surrounded on all sides by family, he realizes that it will be good to be home.


	3. Reformation

Maedhros was the last of his brothers to be re-embodied. Not because his sins were greatest, but because he truly needed to heal, and because he bore the guilt for every wrong he'd ever done, and for every wrong his family had committed without him. It took him years to accept the idea that he could be forgiven, could have redemption, could find a second chance. And so he held out the longest in the Halls.   


He was utterly shattered after Fingon's death, and in fact after that battle lost all hope in his family, and the Oath, and ever finding happiness again, because he viewed the failure of that attack as a failure solely upon his part. It was his idea, after all. His push for unity, his strategy, his brainchild. And it killed the one who was dearest to him.  


He barely smiled at all after the death of the High King, not until he was reborn. Elrond and Elros thought he hated them because of that. Maglor tried to reassure them, but they always had their doubts. And the deeper into depression he fell, the more his missing hand pained him (though it ached, it always ached, and sometimes stung like he was losing it all over again) until he was constantly there, constantly on edge, needles of sharp agony streaming down his arm from his wrist.  


When he's finally given a new form, the first thing he does is weep. For ages even his formless _fëa_ possessed but the one hand, and now once again he has the pair. It drives him to tears. 


	4. Resemblance

Elrond and Elros look uncannily like Fingon.  


Not enough to be really noticeable if you didn't know the former High King, but enough that it's evident to those who did. Genetics are weird, and elvish genetics even moreso; they wound up resembling their great-uncle more than their grandfather, but they've got Turgon's nose if you look closely.  


Their foster parents don't notice it for years. When the twins were children they didn't look like anybody but themselves, or else they took after Elwing. But as time passes they grow more and more Noldorin in speech and appearance until the resemblance is striking. It actually doesn't register in Maedhros's mind until late, when they're nearly adults but not quite past their first century. He's reading a book and Elros just happens to pass by, and he sees broad shoulders and dark hair and the edge of a familiar profile and something in his mind goes back centuries to Before, and his mouth opens -   


"Hey, Finno?"  


A jarring pause, and then the weight of years as thought catches up to reality, and a gaping hole in his chest as the smell of dust and blood fills the room, I killed him, I lost him I lost him I -   


"Did you mean me?" Elros asks, almost laughing, and Maedhros swallows and forces himself to nod.  


“Sorry. I was thinking of someone else.”


	5. Ignition

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canonical character death here. Also suicidal thoughts and ideation, and maybe a suicide attempt if you squint? I'm not sure that's what I intended, but it could read that way.

There was a fell and far-off look in his brother’s eyes, burning and gleaming like white-hot steel at the forge. He could see - could feel - that Nelyo was angrier than he’d ever been, and somehow angrier still beyond that. Every inch of his body was tense and taut with barely-contained rage, and yet his expression was resolved and distant.   


Macalaurë had seen that look before, years and years ago.   


“I have to go to him,” Nelyo said, and his voice was deadly calm. Every breath he took was slow and calculating, sparking the fire in his eyes to new heights while his expression grew more and more resolved, as if etched in stone. He rose from the half-crouch he’d fallen into, shoulders shaking with repressed sobs. There were tears streaming down his face. The air around him began to shift, to waver, like a breeze in a forge, like -  


- _like heat rising from a fire_ -   


“No!”  


Macalaurë was moving before he realized he’d cried out, tearing down the hill, slamming into his older brother and knocking him to the ground. Beneath him, Nelyo screamed again, dropping his sword and striking out with his fists as hard as he could.  


“Let me _go_ , Macalaurë!” he demanded, drawing his legs up to try and kick his younger brother in the chest. But Macalaurë held fast, pinning him down, weeping himself.  


“ _No_!” he answered, taking both hands and shoving his brother into the dirt as hard as he could. “He’s dead! You won’t save him now, all you’ll do is kill yourself and go up in smoke with our father!”  


“So _let_ me!” Nelyo cried, shoving back with strength that matched Macalaurë’s own. The air still quivered around him, but the fire in his eyes and the horribly familiar light had dimmed. “I am Fëanáro’s eldest son - why should I not burn with him?!”  


“Because you’re all I have left!” Macalaurë shouted at him, wide-eyed and desperate. “Because Tyelkormo and Curufinwë have shut me out, because Carnistir barely speaks to any of us, because Ambarussa is hollow-eyed and ever more distant!” He was furious too, not least because he had no idea how much longer their men could buy them this precious time away from slaughter and blood; he punctuated each sentence with a shake of Nelyo’s shoulders. “Because you are still our King, even after your abdication, and we must follow you! Because I cannot - !”  


His voice broke, and his whole body shook as a sob tore its way from his chest.   


“Because I cannot watch you die like I watched _him_ die, you fool. And for a moment you were already burning.”


End file.
